In accordance with this understanding, still another embassy came to London, in November 1621. On this occasion the ambassadors were provided with full powers to settle the East Indian disputes, and with less ample authority to deal with the Spitzbergen fishery question. But, astonishing as it appears, they were again sent without any power to negotiate any treaty about the herring fishery. That the States, after so many delays and evasions, in the face of so many protests from the king, should again break their promise, shows both the great importance they attached to the matter and their belief that James would not force on a quarrel about it. In their secret instructions the old injunctions were repeated. They were to beg that as a year had not yet elapsed a little further delay might be granted; laying stress on the danger to the Protestant cause, in view of the relations with Spain, if anything were done to lessen the sea-power of the Netherlands, which depended so much on their fisheries. At this time the East Indian question had become important and pressing in England, and the early conferences were confined to it. But later the king broached the subject of the herring-fishing; and after listening to the ambassadors for a while, he peevishly asked them to make an end of their long harangue, called them leeches and blood-suckers, who sucked the blood from his subjects and tried to ruin him,[380] and then treated them to the same sort of disquisition as on former occasions. To the king’s railing and reproaches the ambassadors made such answer as they could, and the upshot was that they were allowed to go on with the conferences on the East Indian question. This embassy, at the head of which was François Van Aerssen, Lord of Sommelsdijck, remained in England until the spring of 1623, engaged in negotiations, often interrupted, on political affairs, and on the East Indian and Greenland fishery questions. James did not harass them further about the herring fishery. At the farewell audience he spoke of it in a good-natured way. He must, he said, resume his old song, _veterem cantilenam_, but not at that time. But whenever the condition of the Netherlands was favourable, he would, he said, be glad to resume the negotiations.[381]